NANOCOMPUTERS: THE
COMPUTERS OF TOMORROW:

TRENDS IN COMPUTATION

The March 1949
issue of Popular
Mechanics described the latest and greatest number cruncher: "Where
a calculator like the
Eniac is
equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in
the future may have only 1,000 tubes and
perhaps only weigh one and a half tons." Imagine a calculator that
almost fits in a small room!

"Nanotechnology will let us build computers that are
incredibly powerful. We'll have more power in the volume of a sugar cube than
exists in the entire world today." -
Ralph Merkle. A child's toy
in the future will put to shame the combined might of all the computers on
earth
right now.

RayKurzweil
has shown that our technology is now doubling its capabilities every
year. This exponential growth in the form of 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256,
512, 1024, 2048, 4096, 8192, 16384, 32768, 65536, 131072, 262144, 524288,
1048576, etc. clearly shows that though the pace begins slowly,
there is massive change packed into the last few years of any sample period of time.
In other words, it sneaks up on you. Computer processing power will increase
1000+ fold during the next decade, one million fold
over the next two decades, and a billion fold in three
decades. Considering
the current power of our computers, a billion-fold increase in
computational power is almost unimaginable. This will lead to presently
unimaginable applications for this abundance of inexpensive computer power.
As processing power grows, the mass
and volume of physical material required will also shrink significantly.
These trends have steadily progressed at a slowly increasing, exponential
pace since before the first electronic computer, and will continue until we run hard up
against the atom (and ultimately
the Singularity.)

Smaller than both of its
predecessors, the minicomputer and microcomputer,
the term "nanocomputer" refers simply to a computer
constructed of nanometer-scale components. An entire nanocomputer itself may
be microscopic. The only technology that is required to build
nanocomputers, once again, is the
molecular assembler.

Nanocomputers are expected to become the logical successors to today's
microcomputers/microprocessors. In a continuation of long-standing
Moore's
Law, the nanoprocessor would far extend the capabilities of current day
computer processors, enabling a vast range of new applications.
Nanocomputers will be far smaller, faster and more capable than today's
microcomputers.

There are
no commercially available nanocomputers in existence at this time.
Nanocomputers may be constructed using electronic, mechanical, biochemical
or quantum technology. It is unlikely they will be made out of semiconductor
transistors (the technology behind current-day [circa
2010] computers) as
they do not function well much below approximately 50 nm. Circuit elements
at this scale do not even approach the fundamental limits that we expect to
reach through nanotechnology. Nevertheless, current chips produced by
nanolithography could be considered "nanotechnology," simply due to their
having transistors below 100 nm in scale. The process of nanolithography,
however, will never be capable of producing true nanocomputers envisioned
here, built with almost ultimate precision.

Current-day computer chips are still very inefficient, two-dimensional,
bulky and crude. Nanotechnology will enable the creation of nanocomputers
that pack in as many transistors (or their analog) per unit volume as the
limits of the atomic structure of matter permit. They will be far more
efficient, producing much less waste heat and therefore allow for "stacking"
of transistor elements to be into the third dimension.
Nanocomputers will be built that utilize every atom they are
composed of as a computational element.

PROCESSING POWER

The smaller a computer processor is, the faster
it can operate; nanocomputers will enable us to speed up computer processing
by an enormous factor. The fastest
nanocomputers will be electronic, though the smallest may not. The essence
of computing is simply a collection of switches capable of turning one
another on or off. For this reason, it is possible to build a purely
mechanical computer. This is not done presently because it would be bulky,
slow, unreliable and extremely expensive at our scale. With components a few
nanometers wide, however, a mechanical nanocomputer could be much less than
a cubic micron in size - millions of times more compact than today's
microelectronic circuits. Although mechanical signals propagate much more
slowly than electronic signals, they will not need to travel as far at the
nanoscale, and will therefore face less overall delay.

We always use the latest generation of technology to create the next generation
of technology, which causes a compounding effect on the resultant power and
capabilities of that technology.